How did expanding trading networks across Africa and India help facilitate the commercial expansion of both China and Europe?
How did the expansion and conquests of the Mongols and Turks help stimulate maritime expansion in the Atlantic and Afro-Eurasia?
Why did China, between 1400 and 1644, under the Ming Dynasty shift its focus from maritime expansion to defense against Mongols and other steppe tribes on its northern borders?
Why did the multiple centers of Europe produce a different dynamic in maritime, trade, and military expansion between 1400 and 1700 than did the centralized empires of the Ottomans and the Mughal, and Ming Dynasties?